Palindromes
by Grumio
Summary: In the off season, Farkle thinks about unconsciously corresponding facial hair. Larkle/Rilaya actor AU drabbles.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** Define "ownership".

 **Summary:** Larkle and Rilaya-flavored screen actor au drabbles.

 _Netherverse_

The other boy looks familiar.

As the night progresses it becomes apparent that not only is this not a figment of Farkle's imagination, but the other boy feels and tastes familiar. As though "stranger" is a euphemism for "sudden and ideal contact clumsily executed in the recreation room of a mutual friend" or they're starring in the sequel to events shaped in a parallel universe.

As the other boy (his name clotting stubbornly in Farkle's throat) draws a hesitant thumb across the expanse of Farkle's cheek the particulars seem awfully irrelevant.

In the ten or fifteen different versions that play themselves out in the span of any given year, Lucas is in Toronto/New York shooting, Farkle is at home/visiting friends and they spend the day just missing each other. (Thing One goes to library only to find the last copy of The Invisible Man has already been checked out. On the other side of the city Thing Two timidly inquires about the state of his dry cleaning and is told he "was just here" by the surly-looking woman at the counter.) At the climax of any one of these Meg Ryan-flavored afternoons, they finally grab opposite sleeves of the same hoodie, or order the last white chocolate biscotti at the vegan place on lower 6th, or casually reach for the same Ween album and the spell is broken. Each boy realizes he is staring into the eyes of his doppelganger, the man who has both minorly inconvenienced him and made larger, more irritating contributions to his life as a whole.

Since neither party has the constitution strong enough to make destroying the other feasible, and restoring balance to the universe is a lot of effort to exert for a Tuesday, there is only one-borderline regrettable-option.

Lucas' last coherent thought is always that there are narcissistic acts and then there's this.

Farkle remains intensely invested in the saga of the Path of the Other Boy's Thumb, and wonders how it will go about resolving itself in a way that is not a disappointing cliff hanger.

As they stumble into Riley's bathroom, each boy will briefly consider committing the episode to paper, changing certain names and selling it to _The_ _New Yorker_. 

* * *

In the off season, Farkle thinks about unconsciously corresponding facial hair. The politely parted fuzz silently growing its own agenda on his upper lip waits an entire year to move oddly against the triangular patch Lucas harvests while doing press for that John Green movie Farkle doesn't see five times in five different theaters. (During a moment of readjustment, his premature baby rushes forward, eager to humiliate him, taps the other boy's soul patch in a way that suggests some intangible form of solidarity is being established.) 

* * *

(In the first version-his favorite-he stands with his back against the sink while Lucas traces the scars from the Scott Pilgrim Summer, when all of Farkle's friends receive handsome sums of money in exchange for beating his ass into the ground on camera.)


	2. A Switch is a Very Simple Thing

**ABEDFAN:** Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying these.

 **Morbidking06** : Hi, thanks for reading. 

_A switch is a very simple thing_

* * *

It's not just that she's Spider-Girl (only it is because holy shit she's fucking Spider-Girl) it's that she's been Gwen Stacey being Spider-Girl for eight months and it's kind of the most distinctive feature about her life. She's taken the sarcastic, disenfranchised Leo thing too far and now scraping the twenty-two year old Stan Lee-flavored dream off of her soul feels impossible. It's problematic because normal character bleed sucks and takes forever to do away depending on the method of disposal (some instances call for patience and serenity, for others she is forced to load her metaphorical shotgun and hunt it like the annoying game that it is) but the this feels almost vengefully personal, quite as though-just to be petty-the extraction will claim one of her internal organs on the way out.

Maya likes to think of the process spiritually as opposed to clinically, but the fulfillment of her formative wish is laced with a duality shown thusly:

Yay Spider-Girl! : The death of her anonymity.

Fun Costume! : Burrowing so deeply into that alienated school girl she is unable to return for hours and is saddled with the fourteen year old version of herself who only takes the stage in an effort to stop (if only for a few hours) feeling all of the intensely contrary emotions that have chosen her as a host and Present Maya has to do a headstand or watch _Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory_ or sing very loudly in very crowded areas until Teen Maya takes her menthols and her Sleigh Bells and stomps back inside. The end result is a hazy, difficult to recollect set of evening hours that sway between room service and cartoons and disturbingly accurate dolphin impressions in the rooftop pool.

For the Modern Actor, bleed-through is payoff, proof that you're feeling what you pretend to, the dual victory that same form of truth exists and you aren't wasting everyone's time pretending to unearth it. It's good and painful and in interviews, she's really good about insisting that lines be constructed in a safe way, like creating a path for the perfectly healthy bleed through is completely doable as opposed to terrific bullshit. Maya pretends to be an authority on this phenomenon only because she is constantly being reassured that healthy character bleed doesn't exist. Occasions, mid shoot when everything feels oddly bright and perfectly porous, she begins to wonder if the sweet catharsis that made the abandonment of her skin necessary is worth what she receives in return.

An otherness, a feeling of Not Quite There that punches her soundly with its little fist in her first grade production of the Wizard of Oz, feasts on stupid vines and little home movies. Grows larger and larger A Midsummer Night's Dream and You Can't Take It With You, and achieves its weight class, becomes something all-together human when she slips into Mal Zuckerberg-a visceral distance the time it takes to traverse becoming longer and longer until finally, on the set of Spider-Girl, Maya feels the rate and dimension of her transparency is subject to change. 

* * *

The (only) reason she is (mostly) stable is Riley.

Riley who texts her fifty to seventy-five times a day, and draws doodles of unicorns and sloths on her face if Maya passes out first, and makes her watch Cartoon Network (which saves her the trouble of actually having to drop acid). Who can take her out of a scene, right out of that two second space between Maya and Gwen, by bopping her on the nose like she's just done something precious. Her happy reply has become instinct and it tethers her quite neatly before Angela yells 'action!'

In bars, where they are routinely gin-soaked sponges, Riley makes endless fun of her Earnest Young Actor. The aloofness, the pompadour, the "I'm just in this for the art man" Kanye West shrug that establishes street cred while simultaneously implying anyone taking money for doing God's work is a narcissist unworthy of the craft. She sips her mojito and calls Maya a hipster and it's like a massage, warmth kneading at the tension in her back, mixing with the sleepy heat of the alcohol; a marriage that spells world peace for Maya. They light up the bars in stealth formation, hangovers singing in unison the next morning under glaring make-up artists and every single sound of a nature that's entirely too loud to exist.

At the _Social Network_ table read, Riley's just a cool girl willing to share her pita chips. She mainly exists in stories told with an almost maidenly shyness by their mutual Farkle, stories so elaborate and detailed that by the time she's jokingly returning Maya's mock professional handshake the brightness in her eyes and the 'designed to mock' curve of her smile are just links in the chain of Maya's growing affection.

(In the lobby, when Maya's fastening her helmet and Riley's looking out of the picture window for her car, a guy in cargo shorts and a button up presses his face against the glass and screams at\asks her to be his wife. He proceeds to hold up a collection of handmade signs that all subtly hint at a martial theme without abandoning the vocal aspect of his campaign. Riley glances back to give Maya the very first incarnation of her _is this real life_ face, as though they've been witnessing things like this for years. As if by force of habit, Maya's eyebrows go up in a non-verbal "All of your life choices have led to this moment" kind of way.

By the third week of filming, Riley no longer needs her key card.

She's passing out on Maya's couch, and eating all of her strawberry gelato, and sending Neil Degrasse Tyson passive aggressive tweets about Pluto from Maya's twitter account, and falling asleep against Maya's shoulder, and sighing contentedly while pulling the sleeves of Maya's favorite hoodie over her knuckles, and hogging the blankets, and buying Maya popcorn at Knick's game and sending her the dumbest cat vines, and singing _You Belong With Me_ while they brush their teeth, and occasionally forgetting how to make sentences and making Maya laugh so hard she actually has to sit down until she can remember her lines, and sometimes looking at Maya like she's something precious, so soft and so warm until Maya reminds herself that they're playing best friends and Riley's probably just making sure it feels real and that's fine and good and healthy and awesome and not at all something that burns Maya's lungs when she thinks about it.)


End file.
